The present invention relates generally to workstations used by hospital staff in attending to patients and, in particular, to an electronic medical record system working with such workstations.
The transition from paper records to electronic medical records in the hospital environment has been facilitated by the use of patient care computing devices. For example, mobile computing devices are transported from patient room to patient room by a healthcare provider and can include laptop computers, tablet computers, etc. One exemplary mobile computing device is known, as “computers on wheels” (COWs) or more commonly as “workstations on wheels” (WOWs). Alternatively, many patient rooms are provided with the same functionality in a fixed workstation in each patient's room.
A WOW provides a mobile computer workstation, typically communicating with a centralized database via wireless link, combined with a supply cart holding medical supplies and the like. The WOW permits a healthcare provider attending patients to electronically capture medical data related to the patient. The data may be entered, for example, through a keyboard and mouse or similar cursor control device on the workstation or by using devices such as a barcode scanner capturing data from medicine containers and the like, as medicine is administered, to record and verify proper dosages.
Similarly, a mobile or fixed workstation may be used by the healthcare provider to allow direct entry of data while in the patient's room. The entered data may be received from one or more medical monitoring devices, the result of patient observation, the result of patient interaction, etc.
In some situations, particularly in the intensive care unit (ICU) where ready access to the patient's bedside by a cart is blocked by equipment, the effectiveness of the WOW or other computing device is significantly decreased. In such cases, the healthcare provider must park the WOW away from the patient, for example in an adjoining hall, preventing contemporaneous interaction with the WOW in providing data to the healthcare provider and recording observations. Where a fixed or mobile computing device is used, the healthcare provider may not be able to position the device proximate to the patient such that the caregiver can both interact with the patient and enter data and receive information using the computing device.